Our problems in attack has nothing much to do with the individual players, but it is more on the team as a whole and Ancelotti is majorly culpable for this.

We all know this season our attack has been subpar and we are somewhat over-reliant on some Jude magic. Jude has outshone Vini Jr who is our star player last season and out of all our attacking players, none of them has quite been at the top level this season.

We all can throw shit around to the players. Vini Jr is trying too hard/complaints too much. Rodrygo is in a bad patch of form. Joselu is indecisive and his movement is sluggish. These are the kind of criticism that we often see. However, I feel like it is hard to blame the players for this.

Let’s not kid ourselves, as subpar as our attackers have been so far, they are talented as hell. Even Joselu. And the reason they couldn’t reach their best this season is because they’re not playing well TOGETHER. In the game against Rayo, I remember Vini intervening a header which should have gone to Joselu. There’s also a cross from a right hand side that should have gone to Jude but Joselu intervened and headed the ball wide. In the late stage, there was a cutback that should have gone to Rudiger but Rodrygo took a shot instead. Vini, Joselu, Rodrygo (it doesn’t matter if all 3 plays or only 2 of them) has been too individualistic and they’re not clicking well among themselves. And I believe this is down to [Carlo’s management style where he just let the players do their thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG1MJxDRjqY).

This management style is perhaps doable when Carlo first rejoined us back in 2021. But at the time, Karim Benzema has played for us for more than 10 years — a highly experienced and skillful player. Karim has played with Vini and Rodrygo for a number of years. Of course Carlo can let them do their own thing because Zidane has coached them well.

But now that Benzema has left us, we are left with 2 quite young players and they now have to partner up with a striker with different play style from Karim who just joined us this year. And this is on top of the fact that they had to adapt to a new formation. Joselu can score goals but he can’t lead an attack like Karim does. Vini perhaps can be the focal point of attack but he doesn’t truly “lead the attack” either. At this point, all this responsibility seems to fall on Jude. Therefore Carlo need to step up and make sure that our attackers communicate and work together.

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by royrochemback